Melbourne support for Max

The Victorian Young Liberals organised a solidarity rally today at Melbourne’s Max Brenner Chocolate shop in the CBD followed by speeches from Liberal identities and Jewish community leaders on the steps of the State Library.

Senator Mitch Fifield

Dr Danny Lamm, the president of The Executive Council of Australian Jewry, told J-Wire: “The rally was essentially an anti-BDS affair with the Liberal Party’s younger members making it clear they did not support any notion of boycotts, divestment and sanctions against Israel.”

News of the meeting reached members of the pro-BDS faction and a small number of them arrived on the scene to make their presence felt. Danny Lamm added: “Police formed a line to separate them from the Liberals’ meeting. There were no incidents.”

The Young Liberals organised a photo sit-in at Max Brenner before the speeches, inviting the presidents of the Jewish Community Council of Victoria, the Zionist Council of Victoria, the Zionist Federation of Australia and The Executive Council of Australian Jewry….John Searle, Sam Tatarka, Philip Chester and Dr Danny Lamm respectively.

Representing the Liberal Party were Senator Scott Ryan, Senator Mitch Fifield and Federal MPs Josh Frydenberg and Kelly O’Dwyer and State MPs David Southwick and Elizabeth Miller.

Scott Ryan

Lamm said: “We ordered our coffees and hot chocolates but it was not long before the pro-BDS protesters arrived outside the store with their placards and megaphones. They demonstrated their racist tendency chanting ‘free Palestine from the river to the sea’ . There were about 30 of them.”

The 250 people Young Liberal supporters left the chocolatier’s store making the short trip to the State Library where they were addressed at the rally by Lamm, Searle and Tatarka. Representing the Young Liberals were Gideon Rozner and John Shipp, Senators Fifield and Ryan, MPs Kelly O’Dwyer, Josh Frydenburg and David Southwick.

Lamm added: “The content of the speeches focused on the pro-BDS activities being illegal and that the organised assaults on the Australian chocolate shops are outrageous.

The disruption to the buying public is rude and offensive. The BDS is bogus, dishonest and stupid. When they say Israel is apartheid, they should consider the conduct of the protesters which disruopted a performance of the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra resulting in the BBC having to cancel their broadcast.”

Comments

Hi Peter,
Thought you might be interested to know (particularly if you are in Melb) that a new grassroots pro-Israel group has recently been launched in Melb on 6th Sept, called Australian Voices for Israel (av4i), and they have had a lot of enthusiastic support from Jews and non-Jews wanting to help and network.
Contact them on info@av4i.org.au.

Is there a mailing list or something I can subscribe to – to get word of anti-BDS protests? I only ever find out after the fact. I’m keen to do my bit.

The BDS movement has as it’s principle goal the end of Israel by crippling it economically and thus forcing it to withdraw from all captured territory and allow the “right of return” to arab (not jewish) refugees and their descendants.

In their head this may lead to a warm and fuzzy binational state. In reality this will lead to a second Holocaust as the likes of Hamas, Fatah, Hezbullah and even Al Qaida avenge their honour in Jewish blood. Supporters of BDS are signing the different warrants of millions of Jews.

Hello Mick just one more point. If the West Bank belongs to some one else and its status is to be detrmined by negotiations, could you expalin the logic of Israel building exclusive settlements all over the West Bank and the Jordan Valley ? Can Australia invade New Zealand and move its population there ?

This Friday September 9 the BDS people under their banner “You can’t sweeten Israeli apartheid” Protest against Max Brenner will be having another protest rally starting outside the State library in Swanston street starting at 5.30 pm. Following a meeting last night of Australian Voices for Israel there are a number of people who will be attending to hand out leaflets. Copy of the leaflet to be used can be seen at https://docs.google.com/leaf?id=0Bwsbhb5mFCtrNzExZmRkOTMtYTMxNS00ZTRkLWE3MTctNjkwNzkwZjIxMWM5&hl=en_US
If you want to be involved in informing the public about the ‘Wall of Lies’ that the demonstrators are propagating then turn up to help. Please print out a few copies of the leaflet for yourself if you can. No confrontation or counter demonstration is planned – this is just an opportunity to inform the public about the misinformation that the BDS movement keeps spreading about Israel.

What on earth does a chocalate shop have to do with politics between Israel and the Palestinians? The Greens in Marrickville wholeheartedly supported the boycott of Israeli goods, divestment and sanctions against Israel., and prodigally wasted funds on this racist and worthless exercise. In August, I was saddened to see fresh faced young students putting up vile racist posters in King Street Newtown (sydney) in support of a boycott of the local Newtown Max Brenner’s shop. When confronted, they shouted the word ‘Genocide’. Have you ever heard anything so misguided and stupid, let alone hurtful? Real cases of genocide go by often without comment. Why single out Israel? It is another form of antisemitism rearing its ugly head!

Israel is not an apartheid state because the Palestinians are foreign subjects of occupation and there is no civil authority for anyone. The whole point is that the west bank and its native population belong to someone not Israel, and that entity is being determined by an ongoing political process.

The apartheid analogy also raises the paradox that in order to apply equal law to the west bank Israel would have to annex the Palestinian territory, a gross violation of international law. Realistic census figures show only a million Palestinians in the west bank, the Jews would still have a large majority and the Palestinians would have no state at all. Some right wingers have even been cheeky enough to demand the end of apartheid by annexation…

I have been to a lot of rallies over the last 10 years and reported on many of them. One of the basic rules of reporting is not to inflate your figures (otherwise no one will believe you). Now I do appreciate that it is difficult to count a rally but one would have thought the difference between 40 and 250 would be fairly easy to spot. Check out the report in The Age today:

Actually I think the Age is probably more accurate in terms of both rallies. Which means there was a 1/2 ratio there as opposed to a more then 1/8 ratio in terms of pro-Palestine activists vs. Zionists. Which given our big rally is on Friday and yesterday was only a counter demo to yours shows how weak the zionist movement is at the moment. I am expecting we will have another several hundred strong rally like the one you accuratly counted last time: http://www.jwire.com.au/news/eye-witness-report-of-latest-brenner-bds-incident/17912

Hello Mickey Great logic. Palestininas have to apply to Israel for building permits, are subject to Israeli military rule and are not part of Israe. Then why is Israel building settlements in the West Bank ?

The West Bank and Gaza are not part of Israel. These territories were taken by Israel from Jordan and Egyptian control during her defensive war in 1967. Israel has never incorporated or extended israeli law into the territories. Therefore Israel is, for that reason alone, not an apartheid state as all the citizens of Israel have full rights of every kind. In the meantime, the Palestinian public have full rights in the territories. The voted in the Fatah and Hamas government as full citizens of the Fatah and Hamas controlled territory. Israel removed all its army and citizens from Gaza in 2005. Israel also does not have any military in the main Palestinian population centres. In South Africa, the Whites extended discrimination over their own African citizens. The Palestinians are not and have never been citizens of Israel.

Why is Israel not an aparthied state ? It occupies the West Bank where Palestinians are under its military rule while the Israeli Jewish settlers are under civil rule. Palestininas do not have citizenship or the right to vote and are confined to enclosed cantons while the settlers live in exclusive settlements and have exclusive roads. Israel continually expands the settlements and demolished Palestinian homes and forcibly seizes Palestinian lond for the purpose.

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